AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If you say so.” My jaw works back and forth. “You knew her better than I did.”
“Consider this my last day, Arsen.” She straightens up to her full height and, even standing a full head taller than her, I’ve never felt smaller. “I’ll be gone in the morning. May your house be all the poorer for the people you’ve driven out of it.”
61
ARSEN
A MONTH LATER
When I walk into my office, I’m glad I stopped to wash the blood from my hands. Because the moment Dominik turns to me, his eyes go looking for it.
“Where’ve you been?” he asks coldly.
“Cleaning up another mess.”
Dominik sighs as I take a seat. “You’ve hunted The Skulldraggers into extinction, Arsen. Don’t you think it’s time you stopped with this vendetta?”
“They’re the reason you were in the hospital for a month.”
“Actually, the Italians are the reason I was in the hospital for a month,” he reminds me. “They’re the ones who put a bounty on Laila’s head. I was collateral damage.”
I ignore his point. Mostly because it’s only been a few weeks, and he’s still healing. I don’t want to fight. Between combing the streets to find any person even quasi-connected to that idiotic motorcycle club so I can give them the agonizing execution they deserve, Marie’s tears and pleas every time I go to visit her, andthe stony silence of Laila refusing to answer any of my texts and calls, I’ve done more than enough fighting the last few weeks.
“I have a plan for the Italians,” I tell him when he won’t stop looking at me, waiting for a response. “It’ll take time.”
“A war,” he summarizes quietly. “That’s what you’ve decided, then?”
“It’s what the Italians decided the moment they put that fucking bounty on my wife’s head. You really think I can let that go unanswered?”
“They’re calling you The Butcher. Are you aware of that?”
I am, actually. I finally cornered Cranium last week. He’d evaded capture by hiding out in an old brothel, literally quivering under the skirts of the madam. I left him in her room, holding his own bowels in his hands. Then I killed her for protecting him.
The Butcheris fitting.
“Let’s hope Alessandro Calcagno is aware of it,” I grit out. “ He should know what’s coming for him.”
Dom shakes his head. “This isn’t you, Arsen. You don’t go on murder sprees across the city. You’re being sloppy. You aren’t thinking clearly.”
I arch a brow. “You gonna accuse me of behaving like Yeremy, too?”
“If the shoe fucking fits!”
“I am thepakhan,and I’ll do as I please. I don’t need you to agree, but I do need you to follow. Or did that bullet make you forget the oath you took?”
Dominik’s jaw tightens. “It’s easy to forget, since you don’t demand the same obedience of all yourvory.”
I shuffle things around on my desk, trying to hide the shaking in my hands. Rage is bubbling so close to my surface these days that I can barely control it. One wrong word and it’s liable to come erupting out of me.
“I haven’t dealt with Jasper yet, but I will.”
“Sure you will,” Dominik scoffs. “The man has been holed up at the Berkeley safehouse for weeks now?—”
“He’s getting clean. Matvei has been with him twenty-four-seven, making sure he stays sober.”
“And what happens when you let him off his leash? Or do you plan to keep him your little pet for life?”
I rise from my chair. “Bitterness doesn’t suit you.”
